(New York) – Governments should take urgent steps to prevent racist and xenophobic violence and discrimination linked to the Covid-19 pandemic while prosecuting racial attacks against Asians and people of Asian descent, Human Rights Watch said today. On May 8, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering” and urged governments to “act now to strengthen the immunity of our societies against the virus of hate.”

Government leaders and senior officials in some instances have directly or indirectly encouraged hate crimes, racism, or xenophobia by using anti-Chinese rhetoric. Several political parties and groups, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, and Germany have also latched onto the Covid-19 crisis to advance anti-immigrant, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist, anti-semitic, and xenophobic conspiracy theories that demonize refugees, foreigners, prominent individuals, and political leaders.

“Racism and physical attacks on Asians and people of Asian descent have spread with the Covid-19 pandemic, and government leaders need to act decisively to address the trend,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director. “Governments should act to expand public outreach, promote tolerance, and counter hate speech while aggressively investigating and prosecuting hate crimes.”Read more…

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Addressing an audience of Jewish Americans on Saturday, President Donald Trump clearly relished the chants of “four more years” and the peppering of red “Make America Great Again” hats throughout the crowded ballroom.

“The Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president, Donald J. Trump,” he proudly told thousands gathered at the Israeli-American Council National Summit before lashing Hillary Clinton, Democrats and the previous administration. Read more…

Donald Trump arrives in London next week for a two-day Nato summit which will see him greeted on Tuesday evening by doctors, nurses and other NHS workers leading a protest of tens of thousands outside Buckingham Palace.

The protesters – aiming to highlight potential risks to the NHS in a future US-UK trade deal – will march from Trafalgar Square up the Mall, and gather at Canada Gate when Trump and other Nato leaders meet the Queen at a 6pm drinks reception.

It will mark the formal beginning of a short summit that has been in the diary for 18 months, but has ended up occurring at the closing stages of an election campaign, prompting jitters in No 10 – and making for Labour’s best hope of a comeback. Read more…

The uproar over US President Donald Trump’s latest outrageous remarks attacking four members of the US Congress – Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar, all women of colour – for constantly criticising America and telling them to “go back” to the countries “from which they came” highlights the trouble with American exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism is not unique to the US. “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” Barack Obama said at a NATO summit in the spring of 2009. And the US is exceptional in many ways. It dominates the world militarily, economically and culturally, in pretty much everything from sport to the number of Nobel laureates. In 2017, it was the preferred destination for fully a fifth of all adults worldwide who desired to permanently relocate to another country. And of course, only Americans have actually walked on the moon.

The US is also exceptional in less desirable ways. It is unique among the major industrialised nations of the world in not providing its citizens with universal healthcare and has the shortest life expectancy and highest infant mortality; it incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on the globe, its income inequality far outstrips other developed countries; and few nations can match the death toll gun violence in the US exacts every year. Read more…

In one of his first calls with a head of state, President Trump fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling the man who ordered interference in America’s 2016 election that he was a great leader and apologizing profusely for not calling him sooner.

He pledged to Saudi officials in another call that he would help the monarchy enter the elite Group of Seven, an alliance of the world’s leading democratic economies.

He promised the president of Peru that he would deliver to his country a C-130 military cargo plane overnight, a logistical nightmare that set off a herculean scramble in the West Wing and Pentagon.

And in a later call with Putin, Trump asked the former KGB officer for his guidance in forging a friendship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — a fellow authoritarian hostile to the United States.

Starting long before revelations about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president rocked Washington, Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were an anxiety-ridden set of events for his aides and members of the administration, according to former and current officials. They worried that Trump would make promises he shouldn’t keep, endorse policies the United States long opposed, commit a diplomatic blunder that jeopardized a critical alliance, or simply pressure a counterpart for a personal favor. Read more…

Donald Trump is on an Orwellian mission to redefine human rights

It has long been abundantly clear Trump has no respect for human rights. Now Pompeo wants to build a new framework to justify the rollback of protections

The president of the United States makes racist comments against members of Congress. He puts kids in cages. Attempts to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Praises dictators.

It has long been abundantly clear that Donald Trump has no respect for human rights. Now, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, wants to build a new intellectual framework to justify the administration’s rollback of human rights protections.

That is the only way to understand Pompeo’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights. In launching the group Pompeo explicitly stated that the purpose of the commission is to start from scratch in defining human rights. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Pompeo described part of the commission’s mandate: It will “address basic questions: What are our fundamental freedoms? Why do we have them? Who or what grants these rights?”

But it seems clear the intention is to both narrow the definition and application of rights. Pompeo said that the commission’s goal is to exclude “ad hoc” rights. While he does not elaborate on what “ad hoc” rights are, he attacks “politicians and bureaucrats” who “create new rights”, and many of the members of the commission appear to have been selected in no small part because they also want to roll back human rights.

As journalist Ali Rogin reported, one commissioner praised Saudi Arabia and defended it over the murder of the Washington Postjournalist Jamal Khashoggi, while another commissioner praised the United Arab Emirates and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic power grab. The commission chair, Mary Ann Glendon, opposes reproductive rights and marriage equality.

While the Trump administration seeks to redefine human rights, it is clearly ignoring the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which itself built on the fundamental freedoms enshrined in America’s own bill of rights. Developed by a commission composed of members from around the world and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the declaration was forged in the wake of the second world war and adopted without dissent by the UN general assembly. A truly historic breakthrough – with countries of all political leanings and cultures backing a common definition of rights – the declaration has been a global north star ever since.

Trump makes US a hypocrite on human rights

While the President and Vice President refuse to take any ownership for the inhumane conditions at facilities that they are responsible for, other countries are probably recalibrating their views of the US. America’s reputation as a leader for human rights around the world has been tarnished by the Trump administration’s legacy here at home. The inhumane treatment is not only harmful to the migrants we are charged with protecting within our borders — it will also hamstring our ability to promote human rights abroad.

That puts innumerable men, women and children in harm’s way.

Domestic record

US officials have shared that detention facilities are overwhelmed by an influx of migrants across our southern border. In a letter she wrote to Congress in March, former Department of Home Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked for assistance and cited overflowing facilities with the potential for a “system-wide meltdown.”

The DHS also has written a public report noting dangerous overcrowding and the prolonged detention of children.

A more recent House Oversight Committee report detailed the ongoing nightmare of Trump’s policy of separating children from their families.

These inhumane conditions aren’t just grabbing domestic headlines — the world is watching. The United Nations said last year that the Trump administration’s child separation policy violates international law, while the organization’s commissioner for human rights was “appalled” by the current conditions of migrant facilities in the US and said that the administration’s treatment of migrants may violate international law.

The ICE raids targeting approximately 2,000 people that began Sunday could put additional strain on already overwhelmed detention facilities. If we can’t guarantee the basic human rights of migrants currently under our care, potentially adding more to the mix is a human rights disaster waiting to happen.

The United States, under successive Presidents from both parties, has been a champion for human rights around the world. Violating these rights here at home, however, makes the goal of promoting them around the world all the more difficult – hypocrisy doesn’t provide the US much leverage.

More rights, more life

In various versions, this message resounded throughout the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Bonn, Germany, which on 22–23 June assembled more than 600 participants from 83 countries, more than 7,500 on-line viewers and reached 14 million more through social media with research, stories and ambitions around the importance of rights as a solution to climate change and a fundamental necessity for life on earth.

The GLF first and foremost addressed the rights of 350 million Indigenous peoples caring for over a quarter of the world’s land surface – at least 38 million square kilometers across nearly 90 countries or politically distinct areas. This intersects with 40 percent of protected terrestrial landscapes and includes 80 percent of all the world’s biodiversity.

“We have a mother, and that mother is our territories, our common home of all the Indigenous peoples and everyone who inhabits this earth,” said Maximiliano Ferrer, general secretary of the National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of Panama.

Without secure land rights and certainty that their lands will not be taken from them, these traditional custodians not only struggle to care for their home environments, but they also have no incentive to do so.

Rights for gender equality, youth, environmental defenders – worldwide, at least 200 people were killed defending their lands in 2017, according to a study by environmental and human rights watchdog Global Witness – and nature itself were also brought into the discussions.

“The water has rights, the tree has rights, the storm has rights,” said Jintiach, who works with the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin to protect his native lands and its peoples.

Despite an increasing number of countries enshrining the rights of nature in legislation, these rights are often not implemented due to overpowering priorities of oil, mining and plantation development, mirroring the reasons for land-related human rights violations as well.

The United States said Friday it will use sanctions against North Korea for its “horrible” record on human rights and religious freedom.

Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, told reporters that the situation in North Korea is “deplorable” and cited the example of a woman who was sent to a prison camp for having a Bible.

“North Korea’s horrible on human rights and religious freedom,” he said. “They’ve been a Country of Particular Concern for years.”

The U.S. State Department on Friday released its annual report on international religious freedom, which covers the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2018.

It notes that the U.N. Commission of Inquiry in 2014 concluded there was an “almost complete denial” by the North Korean government of the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and that in many instances, the government’s violations of human rights constituted crimes against humanity.

In the reporting period, North Korea released a detained American pastor in May. In December, the State Department identified three entities and three North Korean officials associated with serious human rights abuses or censorship.

“We’re going to continue to exert strong pressure,” Brownback said. “Unless they change radically, they’ll continue to be a Country of Particular Concern for us.”

The U.S. in November redesignated North Korea as a CPC for the 18th consecutive year.

“These carry sanctions with them as well, and we’ll use those in North Korea and other places that are particularly egregious cases of religious freedom violations,” the ambassador said. The U.S. in November redesignated North Korea as a CPC for the 18th consecutive year.”These carry sanctions with them as well, and we’ll use those in North Korea and other places that are particularly egregious cases of religious freedom violations,” the ambassador said.

Human atrocity doesn’t start with violence, It starts with prejudice and propaganda

Not very many things scare me, but extremism in every form does.

We hear a lot about the extremism of radicalized Islamic groups, and yes, such groups are worrisome. But labeling an entire religious group with more than a billion followers as dangerous because of the heinous actions of its most radical minority element is also extremism and needs to be called out as such.

We hear about child traffickers trying to smuggle children across the border, and yes, those people are worrisome. But making sweeping generalizations about migrants from south of the border and putting asylum seekers into the same category as human traffickers is also extremism and needs to be called out as such.

When we don’t recognize extremist thinking in our own ranks, we are headed down a perilous path.
I generally think that comparing anyone to Hitler and/or the Nazis is overstating and exaggerative, but I don’t feel that way today. Some of the statements I’ve seen about Muslims and migrants from media pundits, political leaders, and average Joes echo anti-Jewish Nazi rhetoric in frightening ways.

Hermann Goering, who is quoted in this meme and pictured to the right of Hitler, was one of the highest-ranking Nazis who was captured and put on trial by the Allies after World War II ended. He was found guilty on charges of “war crimes,” “crimes against peace,” and “crimes against humanity” by the Nuremberg tribunal and sentenced to death.

The quote comes from a published account of a private conversation with a renowned psychologist, in which Goering explained how “people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.”

We need to remember that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t start the Holocaust by gassing millions of Jews.
The Holocaust started with words. Hitler and the Nazis took advantage of existing anti-Semitic sentiment by fomenting fear and prejudice and spreading false and/or misleading information (propaganda) about the Jewish people.